Structure optimization of e-commerce websites is extremely important—it must be easy for search engine crawling and user browsing. This is an indispensable part of providing visitors with a high-quality user experience. An e-commerce website may have a large number of pages, so a stable and organized link structure will help your business go further.

We believe a clear website structure should reasonably use CSS and JS to minimize server requests, thereby optimizing page loading speed. Since traffic distribution relies on the link structure, it will affect your sales to a certain extent.

So, how should we perform SEO optimization on the link structure of e-commerce websites?

1. Establish a 3-Level Hierarchical Structure

In other words, the number of effective clicks from your homepage to any product page should be controlled within 3 as much as possible. For this, you can refer to the following link structure:

Homepage → Level 1 Category → Level 2 Category → Product Page

Of course, all this is based on keyword research—you need to assign corresponding keywords to each section.

2. Create a Left-Side Navigation Menu

Currently, most e-commerce websites adopt this structure. One reason is related to user clicking habits; the other is that search engines always tend to crawl from the top-left corner of the page when indexing. This design can reduce crawling costs. For example, the image below shows a professional e-commerce website selling tea:

The left-side navigation is simple and clear, with a clean page layout. Compared with large websites with deep hierarchical structures like JD.com and Dangdang, it looks more relaxed and comfortable. At the same time, it highlights the characteristic of tea lovers—”tranquility”.

3. Independent Navigation for PC and Mobile Devices

We all know that mobile traffic has been gradually increasing compared to PC traffic. More and more users access websites via mobile devices, and PC-side navigation menus cannot provide a good user experience. Therefore, we should create a separate menu for mobile devices that only includes truly necessary navigation options.

4. Optimize Your URL Structure

There is a certain difference between URL structure and website structure. Website structure refers to the hierarchical structure of the site, while URL structure refers to the presentation form of URLs—they are inseparable.

For a simple example: If you want to buy a bag of Tieguanyin tea!